My goal is always two-fold: to provide enjoyable challenges for all, and to provide a feeling of group accomplishment for the community. Newcomers may hit the 'enjoyable challenge' after just a few dances, whereas veterans may reach this point only in the hardest dances of the evening. If everyone walks out feeling that they accomplished something fun, as a group, then we've all succeeded together.
The Candlelit Christmas
Dance in Monterey
One of my favorite road memories is from about the year 1995, in
Monterey.
I was there on the weekend before Christmas to call the
regular
contra dance with the wonderful band June Apple, headed by my friend
Patti Walters.
About fifteen minutes before dance time, the hall and the
surrounding community went dark: major power failure, half the city
out. One of the band members and I drove over to the other
side
of town -- which had lights and an open grocery store -- and bought a
huge pile of candles and, as I recall it, aluminum foil. We
stretched the foil along each side of the hall -- partly for
reflection, mostly to protect the floor -- and lit up the candles.
Understand, this was in an old wooden YMCA building -- a
lovely
venue where the Monterey group still holds its dances -- so if the fire
marshal had shown up, we'd have spent the night in the pokey; but when
you gotta dance (and play, and call), you gotta dance. I
appealed to everyone to please keep the side chatter down, since I was
on voice power alone, and we proceeded with no PA. Everyone
co-operated wonderfully and things went great, although
I did run the dances a little long, to spare my voice. About
45
minutes in, the power came back. I was very grateful for the
PA,
but some of the dancers came up to the stage and asked would we please
turn off the lights in favor of the candles, which we did.
People were still talking about it long after: the candlelit Christmas
dance in Monterey.
The
Backstory
My original 'start' in calling occurred in mid-summer 1992 when Drew
Tronvig,
then a frequent visitor to Santa Barbara's dances, failed to show up
for his booking at an event in Carpinteria. This left us
with a
band and a roomful of eager dancers all dressed up with no place to go.
As it happened, I'd had the benefit of a caller's
workshop
by the great George Marshall the previous fall. Armed with
one of
the dances George had taught (Broken Sixpence, by Don Armstrong), and
not much else but good intentions, I offered to call.
Meanwhile, one of the dance organizers ran home for a book of dances, and I called a couple of those as well, I think Petronella and Shadrack's Delight. (They were the only two I recognized, and I wanted to stick to routines I knew how to dance -- not bad advice.) Some other folks stepped up to lead one or another kind of dance too, and in the end a fine time was had by all.
I have three salient memories: the group was wonderful, their good humour substituting for my almost total lack of technique; calling was harder than I'd expected; and I was totally hooked. It was the same experience as I'd had when first dancing: one time down the hall and back was all it took.
It's been written that when we start out in calling, our enthusiasm
tends to exceed our abilities. This was true for me and
within a
few years I was calling more than was good for either me or the
dancers. In the second half of the Nineties I backed away
from
the whole thing and took time to re-invent myself. (The
record
will show there was a two-year period when I did not call at all, then
three more years when I called just a little.)
I mostly owe my re-birth as a caller -- along with many other things --
to my two sons, the first of whom arrived in 2002. Sharing
music
and dance with them allowed me to rediscover the joy for myself.
Both my boys greatly enjoy dance and dance music, and my
older son enjoys 'sitting in' once in a while on the mike -- as he's
doing at right with the Growling Old Geezers.
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